


What if the Storm Ends?

by Zappy



Series: Time for Salvation [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, Speed Force, timestream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 13:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13976388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zappy/pseuds/Zappy
Summary: And I don't see you, as you are now, ever again? The perfect halo of gold hair and lightning, sets you off against the planet's last dance. Just for a minute, the silver forked sky lifts you up like a star that I will follow. But now it's found us, like I have found you. I don't want to run, just overwhelm me.Speed and Time are connected to their very essence, so two lost souls who embody them may just find a way to save each other and themselves.





	What if the Storm Ends?

**Author's Note:**

> I highly recommend listening to the song I got the title from while reading, "The Lightning Strike (What if the storm ends?)" by Snow Patrol
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnEyGS3Hf9A
> 
> This is the second installment of my ideas on how to save Len from his fate at the Oculus, rather shorter than the first but if I get comments/feedback on it I'd be willing to add another chapter or two.

Speed and Time are connected. Time flows like a raging river, and Speed acts as the banks that keep Time from overflowing. If you are gifted, or if you are clever, you can be allowed to sail across Time. But Speed guards Time jealously and ruthlessly, and any attempt to damage Time will result in a fate worse than death.

Those who know this most potently are Speedsters. Crimes only Speedsters can commit, with abuse to their connection to the Speed Force are punished by Time Wraiths, by the Black Flash. By an eternal damnation. With one exception.

Barry Allen walked willingly into his fate, his penance for Flashpoint, for trying to bend Time to his will. He did not expect to ever leave, but he was assured that he’d not experience the Hell that Savitar, that Wally, that Jay had gone through.

That didn’t mean it was pleasant.

~

Aion had existed here since time immemorial. Recently, or perhaps long ago, things had been nearby. When Aion looked, it was discovered that they were people. _Speedsters_ , the Speed Force told Aion. _Speedsters imprisoned_.

The Speed Force liked communicating to Aion in the form of a dark haired woman with mischievous eyes and a golden smile. Aion didn’t remember why that form was important. Aion didn’t remember anything, and yet remembered everything. Time was contradictory that way, when seen all at once.

Then the Speedsters were gone. All was quiet, as it had been before as it will always be. A storm broke and in the eye came another one. Somehow, Aion felt this one differently. The Speed Force treated this one differently.

Only the Speed Force had ever addressed Aion. The other Speedsters who’d been trapped there had not been able to see through the lightning that made up the force walls into the rolling stream of time. Even when gaining access to it as they ran, none of them had been able to see deep enough into the waves to see Aion.

Aion had been so _deep_ in Time that it seemed there was nothing else. Ever present and yet often never there, a shadow rode the waves of Time and Aion liked to watch it. Aion could never reach far enough, and wondered at the reason for trying.

“Hello?” Called a voice, a voice that was not the voice the Speed Force took when Aion got lonely. Aion turned and looked through the veils of waves and lightning. “Is someone else there, or am I by myself here?”

“You’ve never been alone.” Aion replied and to hear himself speak again was a strange sensation. “Don’t you _know_ where you are?”

The form that belonged to the voice relaxed and seemed to settle, “Of _course_ I do. I’m in the Speed Force. It’s just...I saw you and felt like calling out. Why don’t you come closer so we’re not yelling?”

Aion hadn’t left the sea of Time in...ever? But he chose to get closer to the barrier between Time and Speed. Now he could clearly see the Speedster currently imprisoned. It was a man, glowing with a yellow-orange lightning as the Speed Force arched around him and off him, feeding into each other. The man had beautiful hazel eyes.

“Oh, I wonder why you picked _that_ form…” the man muttered almost sadly to himself, as Aion had no idea what he was talking about. “Alright, I suppose I could chat with Snart for a while. What’s up?”

“ _You_ are the one who called out to _me_ .” Snart replied, because the man had called him Snart. “What did you _want_ to talk about?”

The man shrugged, “I dunno. I’ve got nothing better to do.”

“And you believe I don’t either?” Snart’s tone had shifted to annoyance, something he didn’t remember doing before, but it made the man smirk.

“Come _on_ , Snart! We’ve got all the Time in the world! Making small talk can’t be _that_ painful.” The man gave him a wide grin and Snart sighed, settling himself down to match the man. “That’s the spirit! You know, I’ve actually missed you.”

Snart rolled his eyes, “How can you have missed me, if I was always here?”

“Right. Not Snart. Forgot for a second there.” The man seemed to be sad again, but Snart (not-Snart?) didn’t understand why. As he watched, a red lightning bolt flashed behind the man and with a blink of his eyes Snart remembered a name.

“Easy to do here, Scarlet.” The man looked up at him in surprise, “I find it’s best to either just...let it all go, or tell yourself what you want to remember.”

“Alright…” the man gave a grin, “That means you’re in for a _looong_ story, Snart. There’s a lot I don’t want to forget.”

“As you said, Scarlet. We’ve got all the Time in the world.”

~

Ages passed in moments and Snart continued to listen to the man, Barry, talk. Sometimes something he’d say would...spark over to Snart, and he’d find himself saying something he didn’t plan to.

Snart hadn’t remembered anything in a long time. Suddenly he was starting to. They stayed on either side of their veils, waves and lightning brushing but never crossing, but it seemed that Barry didn’t see the difference. Snart wondered at what he saw, because he was _captivated_ as the lightning frequently haloed Barry.

It seemed like the moment was no different than before, but Snart realized as Barry spoke that he _was-is_ Snart. Leonard Snart. But which? Time split in so many directions, near infinite worlds to see into. It was as he realized he was a person that he noticed a rambling to Barry’s speech.

“You’re repeating yourself more than normal, Barry.” He informed the man with a drawl, “You’re almost not making sense.”

“Oh. Sorry about that, Snart.”

“It happens. Don’t worry yourself over it.” Len brushed aside, and Barry shot him a smile before picking up again. The lightning seemed to stick to Barry more now, than it had before. The speedster had started to glow from all the absorbing he’d done, and Len clung to his new grasp of tenses. He didn’t dare leave Barry’s side, because he knew in his gut that if he did, he’d revert back to Aion, lose himself in the flow of Time.

As it was, he had to focus very hard to keep himself together. Barry seemed to never tire of talking about himself, but as the more Len remembered, it seemed the less coherent Barry became. So Len decided to take up the role of entertainer, despite not really knowing which life story was his.

“Quiet for a moment will you, Barry? How about I take a turn at the mic for once.”

Barry scratched at his face and Len suddenly realized that the man had the beginnings of a beard. “Sure, sure.”

With trepidation, Len started.

~

Len was sure he’d gone over his history, _a_ history, one of the many, at least ten times when he noticed that Barry was radiating lightning. The man’s clothes were in shreds, having been destroyed by the repeated and continuous strikes of lightning, and Len’s breath caught.

He was part of Time now-then-will-be, but not the rigid past-present-future that most thought of it as, so he had no idea how long Barry had truly been there. How long Len himself had been there. The Speed Force had called Len Aion, the Deity of Unbound Time, of eternity. Len felt he’d been there for one, and couldn’t recall a point where Barry wasn’t there with him.

But after gaining part of his identity back, Len started to feel every second that flowed by, felt the brush of the waves as he was still engulfed in them. It was wearing him down, just as he watched and saw Barry lose his own grip on himself as the lightning continued to strike.

When Barry stopped being able to recognize him was when Len first tried to reach across the veils.

It _hurt_.

It hurt like he didn’t remember what pain _was_.

That shock of torturous pain was what made Len remember- the brightness of the Oculus, the enveloping pain of the explosion, the harshness of travel on the Waverider, shooting his partner, losing his arm, the weight of the Cold Gun completing him, the look in his father’s eyes as he killed him, Lisa’s laugh as they robbed a casino together, the chill of the ice in his grandfather’s van, the satisfaction of a plan going well, the surprise of being outdone, the race of his heart as he went against the Flash, the smell of the forest as they laid down ground rules of their game, terror as a shark-man tried to shred him apart- relief at being saved against all logic- the smile on Barry’s face through the glass of prison-

The belief that he was a good man.

Len reached again. This time he grasped a hand. The hand held back. What was pain to someone who remembered eternity, to someone who remembered _themself_. Barry looked at him in confusion, lighting racing in his eyes but he still pulled Len closer, pulled him through the veil of Time and into Speed.

It was another age before Len felt anything other than agony, but Barry was there. Still holding onto him. “How many times am I going to owe you, kid?” Len chuckled as he tried to gather his shredded remains of his memories. It was much easier this time.

“Your rules.” Barry replied and Len had to sigh.

“Still not making sense, Scarlet.” With care, Len swept off some of the scraps of fabric on Barry’s shoulder, and the moment they were no longer touching skin they dissolved in a fizz of static. Len looked down to his own state of affairs and noticed that parts of his clothes looked brand new, while parts looked so old they decayed into dust at the slightest movement.

Propriety didn’t seem to mean much anymore, not when you had eternity in isolation as the alternative.

~

With a tenuous hold on his history, Len continued to trade stories with Barry. Some stories made more sense than others, but Len had stopped caring about coherency an eon ago. Death, for surely this was the afterlife, liberated him of his inherit need for privacy, and besides it was _Barry_. Barry who inspired him to be better, both a better criminal and a better man. Barry who never gave up on him regardless of all the reasons Len gave him. Barry who shone so brightly it was almost blinding now.

Now Len could sometimes look away from Barry and not risk losing himself. The Speed Force really was beautiful, it was no wonder that Barry was connected to it. And like most beautiful things, it hurt when you got too close. The feel of the lightning kissing his skin was almost a pleasant burn after so long of nothing-of everything at once.

Barry still attracted most of the bolts, but a stray one would hit Len and he’d stop whatever he was saying until the pain went away. It seemed Barry had noticed that Len was more bothered by the bolts than he was, because Len eventually found himself held to Barry’s chest, the man draping over him like a blanket. The Len-of-back-then would have protested, but the Len-of-now merely continued his running commentary. After all, it was only Barry.

~

With nothing short of dimensions being ripped open, a star appeared before them both. It’d been eternity, it’d been eons, it’d been a blink of an eye since they’d found themselves here, found each other.

A red sphere shot out from the star and the Speed Force shook. Len watched as the bolts of lightning stopped hitting them and instead aimed at the sphere. He looked up at Barry who also looked curiously at the sphere that had invaded their world.

Golden light still haloed Barry and Len reached a hand up to touch it. His fingers brushed along Barry’s cheek and those lightning eyes locked with his. Just the fraction of a moment before the star close in on itself, Barry picked Len up and ran.

Eyes closed against the light, Len just held on until all of a sudden everything stopped and he found himself sitting on the hood of a truck. Len watched as Barry smiled at him then promptly fell backwards onto the road.

He only had enough energy himself to turn and make eye contact with the people in the truck before slipping off and joining Barry on the ground, blackness claiming him in the first sleep he’d had in all of time.


End file.
